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" At the same time I want to say to you that there is just
now an exceptional opportunity for anybody who wants to
take part in the national effort for defence preparation. If a
young man, for instance, thinks he would like to make the
Defence Service his career, he can enter the Regular Army,
or the Navy, or the Air Force. If he prefers to stick to a
civilian occupation in peacetime, but wishes to make himself
ready for his part in defence if this country is ever attacked,
he can join the Territorial Army, which provides the anti-
aircraft units for home defence. Or he can become a member
of the Auxiliary Air Force.
" Then again, if none of those things appealed to him,
there is the great civilian service of Air Raid Precautions.
The Home Secretary called the other day for 1,000,000
volunteers, men and women, for this work, but he said:
* I want the volunteers to be trained,3 because, as he pointed
out, one trained volunteer, who knows exactly what he would
have to do if he were called upon, is worth two or three
who only come in at the last moment when there is no time
to teach them their duties. There are many ways in which
a man may enter this service and obtain the necessary training.
He may train to join the expanded police force which would be
required in the case of war to preserve order, to prevent
panic, and try to help people in distress. Or, again, he
can train to join the Auxiliary Fire Brigade, which is going to
be wanted to man the new large fleets of auxiliary fire engines
which the Home Office has designed, and which would be
quite useless unless there was someone to man them. Then,
again, he could obtain training in elementary first aid, he
could get training as an ambulance driver or as a member of a
chemical staff, and, should he so wish, he could join the large
army of air-raid wardens.
" All this means that those who take part in it have got to
give up an hour or two a week of their spare time, but I feel
confident that there are many who will feel that that is not too
great a sacrifice, and if they will join one of these voluntary
services, and if they will be ready to assist the local authority
in any way that they may desire, they will have the satisfac-
tion of feeling that they will have made their contribution to
'the great national effort for defence.